We Are the Ghosts

by Vicky Skinner

  His words are like a knife. Things might have worked out for Wes and Gwen. But they didn’t work out for Luke. And I don’t think they’re working out for me.

  “So, how long have the three of you lived in Eaton?” Cade asks, out of nowhere.

  “All my life,” Gwen says, and Wes nods.

  Cade’s eyebrows are raised high as he sits back in his seat. We pull out of the gas station and onto the highway. “Ellie?”

  “Yeah, all my life. I mean, technically I was born in Austin, but we moved to Eaton when I was a baby. When, uh, when Luke was almost three. Been there ever since.”

  Wes looks into the rearview mirror, narrows his eyes at Cade. “You’re not a lifer?”

  Cade shakes his head. “Indianapolis until I was nine. But I like Eaton.”

  Wes snorts. “You like Eaton? What’s there to like?”

  Gwen reaches across the space between their seats to smack him on the arm. “What’s wrong with Eaton? It’s not that bad.”

  Wes looks over at her, and even in the back seat, I can see the conflict in his eyes. “Why would you want to live in the same place your whole life? Don’t you want to see the world?” He gestures out the front windshield, like he needs to remind her that that’s exactly what we’re doing.

  “Well, sure,” Gwen says. “I want to see the world.” She shrugs. “But Eaton is home.”

  “I don’t know,” Cade says. “I remember how crowded Indianapolis was. Like, how many kids were in my class and how long we always had to stand in line at the grocery store, and Eaton is just so different. It’s like going underwater.”

  I hear Gwen sigh. “I like the quiet. I’ve been to Dallas a few times. All that city noise, it makes me feel like I can’t think.”

  “Eaton is a fucking cage,” I remember Luke saying. I hear him in my head, his voice so clear he could be in the car with us. He used to say stuff like that all the time, always itching to get out. “It’s where people go to live out their boring lives, to die like boring people. It’ll suck you in, and you’ll be stuck, and you wouldn’t be able to leave, even if you wanted to.”

  Gwen looks over her shoulder at me. “What about you, Ellie?”

  I shrug. I don’t know what to think anymore.

  * * *

  The party isn’t boring, since the baseball team and the softball team showed up and are having a contest to see whose biceps are bigger. So far, the girls are winning, but I’m enjoying the boys’ heroic efforts nonetheless.

  “It’s time for karaoke,” someone announces, rolling out a karaoke machine. I’m not sure why, but the track team parties always end in karaoke. The boys’ relay team sings “We Are the Champions” even though they didn’t place at the meet tonight, and then the girls sing “Bohemian Rhapsody” which turns into a party-wide sing-along.

  And then Luke takes the stage. Luke and I don’t always do a duet. I’m not even really a fan of karaoke, but when Luke asks, it’s always impossible to say no.

  After he takes his place atop the makeshift stage, which is actually just an elaborate fireplace ledge, I wait for him to call me up, wait for him to say we’ll be singing “Lose Yourself” by Eminem or “How Can I” by Nova or “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by the Beatles, our three favorite songs to do together.

  Luke smiles into the microphone and says, “I’d like to invite my duet partner up to the stage.” He smiles out at the crowd, and I think he’s looking for me, but his eyes graze right over me, and I think that he probably wants to sing with Gwen after all. She is his girlfriend, and they’ve done karaoke duets more than once. But when I spot her in the crowd, over by the kitchen with some of the girls on the track team, I realize Luke isn’t looking for her, either.

  His eyes lock on someone, and he points into the crowded room. “Miss Emily Crowley, please come to the stage.”

  Emily Crowley is a sprinter for Eaton High and has known Luke for years, but I’ve never seen her and Luke in the same room before. She’s a freshman, in my grade. Emily rushes over to Luke and crowds in close to the microphone with him, a blush spreading across her face, making it shine pink.

  I glance over at Gwen. Her eyes are glued to Emily and Luke, unblinking as Luke speaks again. “Emily and I just realized a few minutes ago that we’re both obsessed with Kanye, so here’s ‘Gold Digger.’”

  They launch into the song, and Gwen steps away from the group she’s with. She reaches for her coat and her unicorn hat, both of them hanging over a chair, and pushes her way out the front door.

  Up on the fireplace stage, Luke has seen the whole thing. The music is going, but he’s not singing. His shoulders slump, but he whispers something to Emily before handing her his microphone and rushing through the room to get to the front door.

  I maneuver to the kitchen and watch out the window as Luke intercepts Gwen at the end of the walkway. Their mouths move as they argue.

  She angrily throws her hands in the air, and he gestures over in my direction, the direction of the party. I’m afraid that they’ll see me watching them, and I consider hiding, but their eyes never leave each other. Gwen’s mouth snaps shut, and for a long moment, neither of them says anything. Then finally, Luke says one thing, calmly, and Gwen nods. Then Luke steps forward and wraps his arms around Gwen. I watch for a second and then turn away from the window.

  I’m alone in the kitchen for a long time. No one says anything to me or comes looking for me, and the next time I check out the window, Luke and Gwen are gone.

  Sometime after midnight, when I realize that Luke isn’t coming back for me, I ask Wes to give me a ride home.

  * * *

  It’s chilly and dark and rainy in St. Louis, the Mississippi River tumultuous in the wind, and it almost feels like a punishment, like maybe we shouldn’t even be here. I can’t stop thinking about that missing persons ad, my mother actually calling the police like she said she would. And now everyone has to deal with my baggage.

  From far away, the arch didn’t look that big, but now, standing below it and looking up, I feel tiny. We all shield our eyes as we look up at it. There’s a break in the clouds, and the glare from the sun shimmers off its surface as it curves up over us and down on the other side. It’s like looking at a twisted skyscraper, and after a few minutes, staring up at it starts to make me dizzy, and I have to look away.

  “Do we want to go up?” Gwen asks, and I can see in her eyes that she wants to, but that she’ll pretend like she doesn’t if we all agree to stay on the ground.

  “We have to go up,” Wes says, smiling over at her, obviously seeing in her the same excitement that I do.

  The four of us get in line to go up in the special elevator instead of a normal one. They’re like little lounge pods, and I hurry to take the seat next to Gwen because I don’t know if I can stand every inch of me being pressed against every inch of Cade, but that just means he has to sit across from me, and our knees brush through the whole ride. I’m light-headed by the time we reach the top.

  And then I’m light-headed for an entirely different reason. I’ve never been a big fan of heights, a quirk that my family, Luke included, often tormented me about. I was always the one waiting at the bottom of the roller coaster for them, the one who closed her eyes as we went over the extra high bridges, the one who stood back from the windows of any high-rise building we were in while everyone else gawked down at the ground, so far below.

  The hallway at the top is narrow, and I’m pretty firmly buffered by people on either side of me, most of which are standing with their toes against the outer wall, bent over the curve of it to see down below.

  If I don’t think about it, if I just let myself believe that I’m somewhere I’ve been a hundred times, like standing beside my locker at school or behind the register at Books and Things, I can almost pretend everything is okay.

  I press myself stomach-first against one of the walls, more for stability than because I actually want to look out, but when I do look out the windo
w, down at where we were standing just minutes before, and realize that there’s nothing between me and the ground below but the metal under my feet, I feel a little queasy. I try to focus on something solid, the material around the window, the concrete ground below, the buildings of St. Louis in the distance.

  Cade comes to stand beside me, his leg brushing mine. “Ellie, you okay?”

  I press my face into my hands, and then I take a deep breath and look out the window again. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You’re solid on your feet,” Luke used to say when I had my hands over my ears and my eyes clamped shut. “You’re not going to fall.”

  “But what if it’s not me that falls?” I would ask, when we were standing too close to the edge of a bridge or looking out a high window. The first time I said it, we were on a carnival Ferris wheel. I was sitting as still as possible, trying not to rock the seat Luke, Wes, and I were sharing. My mother was so convinced that once I got in, once I got to the top, I would love it. That the view from the apex would be so breathtaking, looking out over Eaton, that I would forget my own fear.

  There isn’t enough distraction in the world to make me forget. I didn’t forget on that Ferris wheel, and I squeezed my eyes closed, as tight as I could, telling myself that I was somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  This time, I stare out the window and let the Mississippi take my mind off it. We followed it all the way here, and something about the gentle lapping of the water in the wind makes my stomach settle a little bit. People sit by the edge of it, walk along beside it, stop to look out at it like I am.

  “Do you want to go back down?” Cade asks, but I can’t focus on what he’s saying. Down by the river, I see a figure. He’s far away, but everything about him is familiar, his dark hair, his broad shoulders, his baggy jeans. From up here, I watch him turn and look up at the arch, and I swear, just for a second, that it’s him. My pulse jumps, and I grip the edge of the window, everything else fading as I try to focus, try to make out the features of the person’s face so far away.

  “I’m not going to let you fall,” I can almost hear his voice in my ear saying, and even with my eyes closed on that Ferris wheel, I could feel him beside me. Solid. Luke was always solid, always present, always a rock.

  “You can’t keep this thing from falling,” I said to him then.

  “You think the nuts and bolts holding this Ferris wheel together would dare defy the will of Luke Johnston?” He laughed about that one, and so did I, and by the time we were done discussing whether the Ferris wheel shaking apart around us was a possibility, the ride was over.

  “Luke,” I say, pressing my hands to either side of the window, leaning over as far as I can to watch the figure. Everything in me stops. I stop breathing; I stop moving; I swear my heart stops beating. I want it to be him. I want to pretend like I live in a world where he could still be alive, walking right to the arch, just to see me, like he never left, like we’re just on this vacation together, and he’s going to be waiting for me down at the bottom of this tower so that we can listen to Nova in the car and go for milkshakes.

  “Ellie, what’s going on?” Cade stands closer to me so that he can see out the window, too, and I want to point down at the guy, still walking toward the arch, up the stairs that lead down to the river, his hands in his pockets. But my arms don’t move. I’m clutching the window so hard, a slight pain forming at the ends of my fingers. Be Luke, I think to myself, something pressing up into my throat, against the wall of my chest, maybe a scream, maybe a sob, maybe just something.

  I want it to be him because I want to tell him that I came here, all the way to Missouri, and that I’m just as brave as he is, and that things can go back to the way they were if he’ll just take me with him.

  “Ellie,” Cade says, and I hear the sadness in his voice, feel it settle over my skin. “That’s not Luke, Ellie.”

  “Here,” Luke said, grabbing hold of my hand, even though we were firmly on the concrete. He helped me out of the seat and back onto solid ground. “Better?”

  I watch the guy move across the expanse of concrete below. Of course it’s not Luke. He doesn’t look anything like him. His hair isn’t as dark as Luke’s, his shoulders sloped down at a sharp angle, his back too hunched and his walk too uneasy. I feel sick.

  I feel Cade’s hand on my arm, his voice in my ear, and it startles me. I back away quick, moving away from him too fast, and I swear, I feel the arch sway beneath my weight. Or maybe it’s just me. I feel like there’s no solid ground anywhere on the planet.

  “Ellie?” Gwen appears at my side and puts an arm around me, and I ignore the eyes of the other people in the building as she helps me to the floor under the window, across the arch from where Cade stands, watching us. “You okay?” she asks, and I nod even though it’s a lie. “We should go back down.” She glances over at Cade, who looks between the two of us, and I can’t read the expression on his face, but it’s anything but comforting. My stomach lurches at the way he looks at me. He can see that I’m breaking.

  We get back into the elevator, Gwen pressing me between her and Cade, where I can feel their warmth. Gwen is watching me closely, so I try not to look at her, and as we move back down the tower, her hand crosses the small distance between us and takes mine.

  There’s a mist in the air by the time we make it back down to the ground, and I shiver. Gwen puts a hand to either side of my face and makes me look her in the eye. “Are you okay?” she asks. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot that you don’t like heights.”

  I look past her, at Cade, and he watches me carefully. He knows it wasn’t the height that got to me, not really. It wasn’t looking down from that high up, seeing all the empty space between me and the ground.

  It was that guy. Even now, I fight not to look around for him. Maybe he’s still here, and maybe he’s not, but I keep my eyes focused on Cade and Gwen. It’s not Luke, I remind myself. Luke is gone.

  I gently pull Gwen’s hands away from my face. “I’m okay. Thanks.” My stomach is still a little queasy, but I don’t feel like I’m going to fall over anymore, and that’s something.

  Wes, floating on the periphery, nods in the direction of the river. “Look, you can walk right down to the Mississippi.” He attempts a smile, but his face is completely devoid of joy, and I can’t blame him. There’s something about this place. It’s something ominous, like the sky is going to swallow us whole.

  “Let’s go down,” Gwen says to Wes, and they both turn to me, but I just shake my head. The Mississippi and I clearly don’t get along.

  “Will you be okay?” Gwen asks. I assure her I will be and watch them go, descending down the long, wide concrete staircase until I can just barely see them against the gate that separates us from the water.

  I stand directly under the arch, right in the center, and crane my head back to look up at it. I have to think about something else. I have to distract myself, just like Luke told me, so that I don’t fall apart. I’m okay. I have to be okay. I can’t shatter now. We still have a long way to go until we get to Michigan, still a long way after that, and I can’t stop until I know what’s waiting for us.

  “It’s six hundred thirty feet tall,” I hear Cade say, and I look back down so fast that I get a little dizzy. “The Gateway Arch is over twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty,” he says, but he doesn’t sound very enthusiastic. He stands beside me, his eyes on one of the silver legs of the arch at our side. “It took them two years and thirteen million dollars to build it.”

  I’m a little surprised that he’s still reciting facts, but then I think that maybe this is his way of comforting himself. It’s always been a point of embarrassment for him, but maybe it’s because it’s his coping mechanism. But coping with what, I don’t know. And I realize that maybe I scared him up in the arch. Maybe I’m the reason he has to recite facts to find comfort. I reach out and brush his hand with mine. I’m relieved when he laces his fingers through mine, even though I know I s
hould be putting distance between us. If I’m causing him this much stress, I should back off. Only, didn’t I already try that once?

  “You okay?” he asks. “What happened up there?”

  I start to say yes, even though I don’t have an explanation to follow it, but the wind picks up again, blowing my hair into my face, and it starts to rain, big fat drops that land startlingly heavy on my skin. Lightning crashes over the river, and I jump, moving away from it and from Cade. The rain is coming down, and I can see Wes and Gwen down by the river, putting out their hands to catch raindrops.

  I feel like the world is getting louder, ready to sweep me away, and there’s nothing here for me to hold on to. Why do I feel like this?

  “Ellie?” Cade’s face is dripping from the sudden downpour, his concerned eyes on me. “What’s wrong?”

  The whole world feels like a monster, like some larger-than-life version of what’s inside me, dead set on eating me alive. Lightning crashes again, and it’s like I’m stuck in that world I dreamed about. I’m buried alive; I’m drowning; I’m going to die.

  I turn and run. I have no idea where I’m going. I don’t even really know where I am, but I’m not the only one running. People are scattering in all directions like pigeons on the sidewalk, and I run with them, until there’s a building in front of me, and I throw the door open. I can still hear Cade calling my name, but it’s absorbed by the sound of the rain, the wind, the thunder. By the door that slams shut behind me.

  I’m in a church, an honest-to-God cathedral, and I’m trying to catch my breath. I bend at the waist, and notice that I’m dripping on the hardwood floor. With my luck, they’re probably the original floors, put here by some settlers in the sixteenth century or something. I take a few steps farther in, still gasping for breath, but I’m afraid that has more to do with my panic than how far I just ran.